


What Tama's Seen

by WaterChestnut (SpicyChestnut)



Series: The Drabble Dump [1]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Big Bro Luffy, Drabble, Fluff, Gen, Hope vs. Despair, Okobore Town, Tama loves Big Bro Luffy, Wano Arc (One Piece), Wano Country (One Piece)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:00:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23566480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpicyChestnut/pseuds/WaterChestnut
Summary: Tama has seen many things in her short life; but she hasn't seen someone like Luffy—not in a long time.
Series: The Drabble Dump [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1696222
Comments: 4
Kudos: 42





	What Tama's Seen

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been catching up on the One Piece anime and just finished the scene with Tama and the apple. It was so goddamn cute and just *got* to me, so I wrote a drabble to work through the feels. Enjoy!

Tama has seen many things in her short life.

She’s seen children with hunger so crippling it makes them claw ferociously at their stomach, doubled over on the dirt and sobbing to their mothers. She’s seen men so wholly gripped by desperation that it drives them into the darkest parts of the forest, where they hang themselves from its heavy boughs. She’s seen villains so corrupted by the allure of power as to risk their lives and bodies on a smile fruit that, even when successful, transforms them into little more than a dark mutation of nature.

What she has not seen—not in a very long time, is someone like Luffytaro.

In the part of her mind—or perhaps more accurately, the part of her heart—that she locked away after the razing of her village, she knew there was something special about him, much in the same way there had been something special about Ace. But she hadn’t wanted to hope. Ace had never returned (and now she knew why); promises could be so easily made—and so easily broken. Just like hearts.

But nonetheless, his unexpected entrance into her life had stirred feelings long since put to rest: gratitude, for when he saved her from the beast pirates on the beach; affection, for when he braved a headliner to bring her to Okobore town for medicine; and joy, as she ate Tsuru’s red bean soup on her birthday beneath a rare clear sky, soaking up the sun and kicking her feet beside the strange, dark-haired man who looked and behaved so much like Ace, feeling her smile stretch her cheeks until it hurt.

But love—real, deep, abiding love of the kind she held for her master and the great Fire Fist, hadn’t quite factored into the equation. Luffytaro was amazing—spectacular, even. She’d grown tremendously fond of him, and was grateful for his actions. But, if he was lucky enough not to be killed by Kaido or Orochi, he would leave one day just as Ace had, and might never return despite any promises he made. She would enjoy his company in the present, for if she’s learned anything in her short life it is that she only has the present; the future is too much to hope for.

But then he rescued her from the clutches of Holdem and brought clean food and water to the people of Okobore Town on top of everything else he’d done already. As they dashed away on Speed, her small hands tightly clutching his patchy robes and listening to his joyful laughter, she felt the wall she’d built around her heart cracking. But it wasn’t until they arrived in Okobore and he handed her that apple—all shiny and red and fresh and _perfect_ , giving her that wide, goofy grin as he reiterated his promise of turning Wano into a place that never went hungry, that she felt that wall come tumbling down.

He cared not for the rules he was breaking or the men who stood in his way or the decades-long order he thoughtlessly overturned in half a day—he cared only that he repaid her kindness, and that he made her smile in the effort.

She couldn’t hold the tears back. Kunoichi were supposed to be stoic and strong, but even she had her limits. All she’d done was give the hungry man who saved her from certain doom what little food she had to give. It seemed, at the time, more than fitting an expression of gratitude, and one worthy of the brave and selfless kunoichi she intended to become.

But in return, he had done more than simply repay her meager meal. His actions had given her the one thing she dared not give herself:

Hope.


End file.
